WELL SUITED:

I often wonder about the machinations of the Beatles tours, when there was just the boys and Neil and Mal, who done the washing for the guys?, think of the number of gigs played in just 1963, did they dry clean the suits every couple of days?, times everything by four, like each night four dirty shirts to be washed, then pressed. But Neil and Mal were travelling at breakneck speed with the boys, with little time for these minor chores. I know it sounds trivial, but it’s these little questions that facinate me.

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It’s amazing to me how these trivial things get taken care of on a tour. I read a story in a Las Vegas paper about how Paul’s dry cleaning gets done on his tour this past summer. Apparently, his personal assistant, John, took only one of Paul’s shirts to a local dry cleaner to see if it would done correctly. When it was, he brought about 6 hand-made, beautifully crafted shirts — it was only then that the dry cleaning folks put together who’s shirts they were dry cleaning. You’d think these tasks would magically taken care of, but someone actually has to drive to a dry cleaner they don’t know to try out their services first.

I know it sounds nutty, but these things facinate me, especially around the Fabs, and the frenzied pace they kept, two shows a day, that’s eight sweaty shirts, eight sweaty suits .. not to mention the state of the undies, Neil and Mal were flat out with them, to clean and dry those things takes hours .. really, these sorts of machinations facinates me, and confuses me. I know Paul has wardrobe people on the road with him now, where that is their sole job, the care of the clothes (apart from John caring for his special clothes) but i would love to one day read a book on the workings of the Beatle tours, i mean in real detail.

Mal did write for Beatles Monthly, Kwai, in the later stages. Some of his prose might have been ghost edited but as we know he kept a diary so he was writing/reporting at the same time. Neil wrote tour diaries too – for the NME I think in 1965/66 and also his writings appeared in Beatles Monthly in 1966. That’s where the legend of “The Void” (the working title for “Tomorrow Never Knows) enanated.